Restart has become very slow

"I can confirm the new Realtek Audio Driver (6.0.9210.1, A10) is the culprit."

I spent literally hours troubleshooting this issue, including over an hour on the phone with a Dell tech in India and chatting and emailing with level 2 support.  They didn't have a clue.  I figured it out by using System Restore to go back to a previous state and then installing SupportAssist driver suggestions one at a time.

I can't believe that SupportAssist is still showing 6.0.9210.1, A10 as a suggested update.  How do we get Dell's attention?

Gentlemen,

The updated driver was coming in Windows updates under optional drivers. I was ignoring it.

Today it was forcefully installed in automatic update.

The problem:

I can uninstall it. But when I click Windows update, it gets installed again.

Anyone, with a suggestion to get rid of this cursed driver.... Please

I started having that driver updated via Windows Update as well and @505Kelvin fix is the quickest way to fix the issue; thank you much appreciated.

I sent an email to Realtek support to explain the issue with slow shutdowns/restarts on XPS 15 9500 (including a link to this thread). Hopefully, they will be more responsive than DELL. I tried to find and a DELL tech support email but it seems to have been disabled, shame!

DELL if you moderate these forums, and you should, please acknowledge HERE, and let your tech support agents know about the issue so they can probably communicate with their customers. And please activate a proper tech support email so YOUR customers do not waste time initiating calls or chats with incompetent tech support! a.k.a Customer Service!

Thanks for the response @bouchepat 

Let us hope they respond with a proper solution to this problem.

Dell -- Please respond.....

Thanks @505Kelvin . It worked .

Appreciate your help

This worked.  Simple and quick.  Thank you.

Had the same issue with boot times being in the minutes. But after rolling back the Realtek driver boot times are mere seconds again. As a side note, the Dell Update application doesn't flag this driver as needing update now.

On my XPS 9500, both SupportAssist and Dell Update are still showing the "bad" driver as being recommended.  I simply ignore that, but I'd feel better if Dell stopped suggesting it.

Sweet baby Jesus this actually worked.  SupportAssist updated the driver, and after clean Windows 10 installs, updating firmware, you name it, 24 hours of frustration, this solution worked.  You do have to make sure that after installing the old driver that "Let me pick" in device manager or it will go back to the new one.

a special note of thanks for this-it was the perfect solution. How'd you figure it out?

Just also confirming this fixed the slow start up times from minutes down to seconds.  

I confirm that this has solved my problem as well, thanks bouchepat ! Now, it would be nice if Dell were to release a new driver, thus avoiding new cases of this issue ! 

As of December 2021 the very latest Realtek audio driver 6.0.9257.1 fixes the slow start-up. Download and install 6.0.9257.1 via Dell Support-Assist app and the slow start-up problem vanishes. 

Wiz

Thanks. You are right.

It is also coming with Windows 10 update.
The new driver is shown under the optional updates list.